


The Flightless Bird

by Finnistired



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: ?? - Freeform, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Anxiety, Character Development, Depression, Emo, Eventual Happy Ending, Gay Character, Gen, I Don't Even Know, KageHina - Freeform, M/M, Mild Language, No Smut, No Volleyball, Realistic, Self-Acceptance, Self-Denial, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Verbal Abuse, are you still reading my tags, hinata has problems okay, kage put that knife away, kageyama also has problems
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 01:27:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7598092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Finnistired/pseuds/Finnistired
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leaving is never really the hard part. At least not for Kageyama Tobio who really had nothing to leave behind in the first place. The hard part was arriving in a new country, and being treated like an outcast simply for having accented English. But along with trying to survive in a new high school, Kageyama is losing sleep dreaming of the things his subconscious wants, that his conscious is disgusted and ashamed of wanting. But when he goes to school and finds out he's not the only one who left everything behind, he wishes that he was. Hinata Shoyou seems enthusiastic and cheerful on the outside, but in reality is harboring years of pent up feelings that threaten to crush him at any given moment. They are like the moon and the sun but all they have is each other. As much as Kageyama detests it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1  
Dreams have a way of using your darkest desires against you. Instead of making you feel a forbidden sense of excitement, they make you feel dirty, tainted. Kageyama woke up with a start, his chest heaving violently as he stared down at his shaking hands. He stood up and looked at himself in the mirror, afraid that if he closed his eyes the images would only come back to haunt him. He hadn’t slept properly in days, the dark circles under his eyes only adding to the sternness of his expression. Often times he found himself wishing that he was better at hiding his true nature. Wishing he didn’t inherently come off as cold and empty, even if he truly was both of these things. He ran a hand through his choppy black hair and it fell haphazardly into his eyes, lately he had stopped caring about his appearance. Usually he would have at least made an effort to hide his dissatisfaction with the living world, but there comes a point when you can’t pretend anymore. When suddenly you can’t be societies perfect little puppet, and the strings snap leaving you free but broken. Sometimes the only way to get out from underneath something is to cut yourself free. Leaving scars and open wounds that you aren’t sure will ever heal. 

Kageyama scoffed at his arms as he pulled a sweater over his head. He still couldn’t believe he had used razor blades to carve words into his flesh. Angular Japanese characters scrawled across his skin, put there after a glass to many of his father’s celebratory bourbon. Maybe he thought if he carved them there they would become obsolete somehow. If he could associate those things with pain, maybe he would stop feeling them altogether. But now the scar’s weren’t quite as new, or quite as angry, and he was still waking in the middle of the night to dreams about the very things he had hoped to bleed away. He couldn’t bring himself to call them nightmares, because even if they contained what scared him the most, he knew it was something he wanted. Something he wanted but would never allow himself to have. 

“Kageyama you’re going to be late! It’s your first day.” Right. High School. Kageyama’s parent’s had sprung him with the surprise that they were moving abroad to expand his father's business. He had already missed the first 2 months of school, because he had been spending that time trying to improve on his less than understandable English. He pulled on his ripped black skinny jeans, and slung a worn down backpack over his shoulder and walked into the living room without saying a word. He had never been very good at making friends, his appearance often made people uneasy. And even if they could get passed that, his words came out robotic and emotionless. As though they were talking to their smartphone rather than an actual human being. 

Adding the slight language barrier, Kageyama was already dreading the bus ride. He grabbing a muffin off of the counter and walked out the door, sticking in his earbuds so his mother didn’t even have a chance of communicating with him. He turned on Dir en Grey, blasting into his ears at top volume because maybe if he went deaf he wouldn’t have to deal with people anymore. He hoped that his eardrums would tear under the pressure, leaving him in a world that was finally quiet. No traffic, no moms pretending to care how your day was, no nothing. The gaudy yellow vehicle came to a screeching halt at the end of his driveway, but he was oblivious to the noise. The only thing he liked about the new school was the lack of uniforms. The extra large sweater felt familiar to him. Like something substantial he could cling to, to keep from losing his flimsy grasp on reality. Almost like something he could hide beneath, walking through the world unnoticed, invisible. Just as he wanted to be. 

He took a seat near the back leaning against the window but staring at his feet. Even emotionless he didn’t want to seem like the dramatic type, longingly staring out car windows as the scenery disappeared from view. All he wanted was to get through this day as painlessly as possible, with as little social interaction as he could muster. His English was good, fluent even, but the way he sounded when he spoke it made him feel childish and clumsy. It was a voice he didn’t recognize, only adding to the unfamiliarity surrounding him. The bus stopped once, twice, the downturned faces of sleepy teens passing over him like he was nothing. There wasn’t even as much as a raised eyebrow at the appearance of an unfamiliar face. 

********************************************************  
“Mr. Kageyama if you would please introduce yourself to the class, and then you can choose whichever empty seat you would like.” He looked at his feet instead of at the class. Not wanting to see the faces peering curiously over at him. Trying to figure him out without actually having to make conversation with him at all. People loved assuming things, especially before you ever really met them. They don’t like to think that somehow a person could be deeper than what’s on the surface. 

“My name is Tobio Kageyama. I am from Japan. But I moved here.” With that he moved to an empty seat in the back and continued avoiding eye contact. 

“Please do your best to make Tobio feel welcome here. It must be hards leaving everything you know behind to start a new life.” He shuddered at the use of his name like that. It was something his parent’s only used when they were about to lecture him. Even though it was technically his surname he had only ever gone by Kageyama. But she was wrong about it being hard to leave everything you know. Leaving was the easy part. The hard part was the slowed down exaggerated English from neighbors who thought somehow hand motions would better get their points across than coherent words. It was being treated like a tourist, and seeing your culture become rendered obsolete, as you got treated more like a costume than a person. Kageyama knew he was a foreigner, but he didn’t simply feel like he was from another country. He felt like he was from another planet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note:  
>  I can't be sure whether anyone will ever read this or not, but if you happen to be I would love some feedback! This is my first time using this site and I decided to write this because I had never seen any Kagehina AU's and I felt like the world needed one. I don't know how long this will be or how often I will update. But if you're reading this then thank you! I appreciate you!   
>  _Finn ~(O_O)~


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2-  
“My name is Tobio Kageyama. I am from Japan. But I moved here.” Hinata’s eyes shot up to the front of the room. He had always felt like an outsider, even moving from Japan at a relatively young age he had never met another person that spoke Japanese. Sure sometimes tactless weeaboos would come up to him and try for conversation. Exaggerating the words, and treating him like a toy at their will to be played with. Here he was either a fetish or a foreigner, never having anyone who really understood. Even the international exchange students treated him coldly. Japan had cold relations with both Korea and China, leaving him to be treated like a foreigner even by foreigners themselves. There was an empty seat next to him but considering he was near the front he was sure the new kid would never choose it. He knew he wouldn’t if he was put in that position. 

The class droned on and Hinata found himself gazing back behind him on more than one occasion. Kageyama’s hair fell into his eyes obscuring his face from view. The only time he looked up from his desk was to write down a note or two, before reverting his eyes back to the floor. Finally the bell rang, and everyone else got up but Kageyama remained glued to his desk. Seemingly unfazed by the announcement of the end of the hour. It struck Hinata that maybe Kageyama didn’t know that they had to switch class rooms. In Japan you were with the same people in the same class, and it was the teachers that moved rooms. 

“Umm Kageyama-kun do you know how to get to your next class?” Even though Hinata’s first language was Japanese it felt wrong coming out of his mouth. He had never spoken it in school because there had been no need for it. Kageyama looked up from his desk too surprised that someone had talked to him to even realize that it was Japanese at all. 

“Kageyama..kun..” He repeated slowly finally raising his eyes to meet Hinata’s. Shock and realization spreading across his face while realizing that the person addressing him was in fact of Japanese descent of some sort. The bright orange hair threw him off as he wasn’t used to anything but blacks or dark browns.

“Yeah! Kageyama-kun, that’s your name right? Come on I’ll show you where your next class is. You don’t want to be late on your first day!” Hinata found his rhythm speaking in animated Japanese, finally feeling comfortable again. Reluctantly Kageyama rose to his feet towering a good 7 inches over the orange haired Japanese kid. He pulled a schedule from his back pocket handing it to the other boy without even as much as a nod of affirmation. 

“Oh nice! I also have AP Lang next. Ms.Marquette sucks and she is probably going to talk to you like your dumb or something. So use big words to impress her, and you’ll probably end up being her favorite person.” Hinata forgot how nice it was to speak informal Japanese. With his parents he always had to be wary of sounding respectful but with Kageyama he spoke as he wanted to. Not worrying about grammar or tone. 

Kageyama studied the boy who was guiding him through the hallways. Noting all of the people who shot him looks because of the animated way in which he was speaking. He walked on seemingly oblivious to the stares of people who didn’t like when they couldn’t understand a language. He half expected to hear one of them say the usual ‘this is America, speak English.’ but it never came. Kageyama couldn’t tell if he was relieved or annoyed that there was someone else here who spoke the language he understood best. He had never been good at reading emotions, especially his own. 

“What’s your name anyway?” Kageyama said tentatively, lowering his voice as not to draw the crowds attention towards himself. He found himself being comforted by the tone of his voice. His parent’s had been forcing him to speak English at home with them for extra practice, and it had been weeks since he was able to speak Japanese comfortably without being reprimanded. 

“I am Hinata Shoyou, your self-appointed tour guide. I am from Japan. But I moved here.” Hinata said with a smirk imitating the robotic way in which Kageyama had introduced himself except in Japanese instead of English. Hinata didn’t like that he couldn’t read the expression on Kageyama’s face. He wasn’t sure if it held annoyance, or amusement or really anything at all. Even though he wasn’t friends with many people at school he had always been good at reading people. Knowing who didn’t want him around, and who tolerated his presence. But with Kageyama he didn’t see anything. His eyes were a blue so dark Hinata could have sworn if he really had a chance to look into them he would have felt a pressure so great it was as though he were standing on the bottom of the ocean. There was an aura surrounding him that was both dark and void all at once, like a black hole with no real center. 

“Hello Ms.Marquette how are you doing today? This is Kageyama Tobio the new student from Japan. He was just telling me about how he was top of his class in English back overseas.” He felt Kageyama give him a look but he smiled when he saw the English teacher's eyes widen at the prospect that she was getting a student who was highly proficient in her subject. 

“Oh! Well Hinata I am doing just wonderfully thank you! And Kageyama it is an honor to meet you! I am so looking forward to having you in my class. Please sit anywhere you’d like.” Hinata’s earlier comment had gotten her excited to the point where she didn’t even slow down her English a bit. Despite Kageyama’s annoyance at the lie, he kind of liked being spoken to like a normal person. Not to mention the fact that she had called him Kageyama instead of Tobio. 

“Thank you Ms. Marquette. It is nice to meet you as well.” He did his best not to make his words come out forced. He had nearly succeeded in ridding his voice of any sort of accent that might have lingered, and by her smile he could tell he had done it. Without thinking he took a seat next to Hinata by the window, and instantly regretted it when Hinata turned around looking like he had a lot to say. He was struck by the color of his eyes, a light brown that acquired an orange-ish hue from his brightly colored hair. The only him about him that resembled someone Japanese was the shape of his eyes themselves, otherwise you wouldn’t have thought anything of it. He wondered if they were contacts he had purchased to go along with his brightly dyed hair, or if by some fluke of nature they were natural. 

Hinata waved a hand in front of Kageyama’s face who instantly realized he had been staring for too long. He felt his cheeks grow hot and he looked down at his feet again, resisting the urge to slam his face into the desk. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not here. He was supposed to be able to disappear, to escape the feelings and thoughts that kept him up at night. But here he was not even 2 hours into school, zoning out while staring someone directly in the eye. Before Hinata could say anything the class started and Kageyama turned all of his attention to his notes. Writing every word that came out of the teachers mouth even if it probably wasn’t relevant at all. 

***********************************************************  
The rest of the day sped by in a blur, Kageyama allowing Hinata to guide him to his classes but making little to no effort in responding to his attempts at conversation. Hinata wasn’t phased but Kageyama’s icy demeanor, he could tell he was probably used to people giving up on him. And in a way that was probably something he came to want. He got so used to being alone that it became the only thing he was comfortable with. But Hinata wasn’t going to give up so easily. Because giving up on Kageyama would mean giving up the only person he could speak truly naturally with, the only person who understood what it was like to be an outsider, a foreigner. But the main reason he didn’t want to give up was something he would never be able to admit to himself. If he admitted to himself why he was truly so adamant about being Kageyama’s tour guide, he would have to admit to himself something he had been pushing to the recesses of his mind. 

“Do you take the bus? Or do you walk to school?” Hinata asked following Kageyama to his locker not even bothering to stop at his own. 

“Bus.” Kageyama responded. He actually found himself looking forward to the bus ride home because that meant finally escaping Hinata. At first he was slightly relieved. He had someone who could understand him in the language he felt most comfortable speaking. Someone who knew how easy it was to leave but how hard it was to live. But as the day droned on he found himself wishing for invisibility. The chance to be alone, with no chance of being bothered by the outside world. But it wasn’t the constant conversation, or even the fact that he trailed behind him a step to close. When Kageyama looked into Hinata’s eyes, in a split second he found himself completely lost in them. 

“Oh..Well I will see you tomorrow then! Bye Kageyama-kun!” With this Hinata ran off in the direction of his locker, not knowing anyway else to leave except as fast as possible. When he got to his locker he stared blankly at the combination lock, his mind a scramble of emotions inhibiting him from remembering something as simple as his combination. Instead he slammed his head into the closed locker and raised his fist feebly above him. He wondered why he always had to be so impulsive. Why he couldn’t just for once allow himself to think through the things that were coming out of his mouth. He felt like he had warded off the one chance he had at feeling normal. Finally he turned the dial and pulled open his locker, blindly shoving books and binders into his backpack, without really even being sure that he needed them. 

Why did he feel so useless? He hadn’t even known the new kid for more than a day, and yet he was already letting him control the way he felt. Maybe he was projecting his months and years of built up emotion into this single entity. Maybe it had nothing to do with Kageyama at all, and everything to do with himself. He had spent so long telling himself that he was okay. Telling himself that eventually he would get used to the vacant stares, and eventually find a way into the culture. But now that someone had come who he didn’t have to hide his language and culture from it was as though a dam had burst. His feet pounded against the pavement as he ran nearly blindly in the direction of his apartment complex. Tears slid down his cheeks that felt more like acid burns, but he knew he had to let everything out before his parents could see it, before his dad could see it. He had always told hinata that he needed to act more like a man. That he was too soft. Seeing his son crying would be a last straw for him, and to him it would be like he had lost his son forever. Hinata had always been into more commonly ‘feminine’ things, being attracted to his little sister’s dolls instead of sports. He ran until the tears ran dry, leaving him feeling like a rag that had been twisted and twisted until no water could possibly be left to drip from it. He took the steps up to his apartment building, and walked into the elevator. Normally he would have taken the stairs but his vision blurred from the tears that clung to his lashes and he was emotionally drained to the point of physical exhaustion. 

“Welcome home Shoyou! How was your day?” His mom’s chipper voice felt like a stab to him, he tried to turn the cringe on his face to a smile before she realized how drained he looked. 

“We got a new kid today, Kageyama Tobio, he moved here from Japan.” He watched as his mom’s eyes lit up and she immediately turned all of her attention towards him. As if he knew much more than that. All of the questions Hinata had tried to ask Kageyama were either met with one word answers or no answers at all.  
“Oh this is wonderful! Another Japanese family is here, how haven’t I heard about this. I must contact his family and have a welcome dinner for them!...” She kept talking but Hinata had acquired a 7th sense for droning out what his mom was saying. She had a tendency to go on long japanese ramblings at lightning speed. He immediately regretted telling her at all. Of course she would have to look into it, his mother had been starving for any sort of connection to her home country ever since his father had dragged her to America for work. Now that she even had a thread to pull on she was going to do everything in her power to keep it from slipping through her fingers. 

“Yeah maybe I’ll ask him about it next time I see him.” Hinata said in the hopes of appeasing her. She smiled brightly and continued ranting about how wonderful it was, while Hinata snuck passed her into his bedroom. It wasn't much, merely an over-glorified closet, but it was the only place he had a door to hide behind. He threw his bag on the ground his homework lying forgotten as he dove head first into his bed, screaming into his pillow. But when he closed his eyes he saw himself standing at the bottom of the ocean gazing into an unrelenting blue, that was unforgivingly cold. Kageyama had an eye color that didn’t belong to any other japanese person Hinata had known. Or even any other person he had known. It was as if the color of his eyes had adapted themselves to the color that best represented his soul. Cold, and yet with a depth so great that once you were drawn into them was no hope of release. 

Hinata shot up drawing in breaths as if he had been drowning. He willed himself not to even blink, staring up at the slight crack in his ceiling and wondering what it all meant. Was Hinata really captured by those eyes so easily? Was he really willing to drown without putting up a fight? He felt it useless to try to banish the pictures from his mind, because even though it haunted him the fact that it was there meant he would be feeling something. Kageyama wasn’t really a person to Hinata, not yet. He was an emotional outlet, a proxy for all of the things he had been keeping inside of himself for all of these years. Kageyama was his excuse for finally allowing himself to really feel again.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3:  
Kageyama stared at the ceiling fan as it circle in endless loops around his head. There was no logical reason in which he needed to have the fan on, it was cool outside, a temperature cool enough that Kageyama could finally wear his sweaters comfortably. But he found that he liked the cold, that he was drawn towards it. He had finished all of his homework quickly, even if he wasn’t really at the top of his class in English he had always been a good student, school came easy to him. Because things in school were always something that was constant, formulas, memorization, theory. All of it held a firm basis on which it was constructed on. Kageyama liked routine, order, anything that would distract him from the genuine lack of control in which he had over his own life. He liked getting up and knowing exactly what he was going to do, leaving no room for surprises. But aside from classes the rest of school was something he had no control over the events of. Hinata was a surprise that he had not accounted for, all he had wanted was to get through the day as painlessly as possible, no one really remembering his name, and no one really caring to. 

Foolishly he had allowed himself to become the small boys shadow, to allow him to guide him to classes because something felt familiar in the way he spoke. Maybe if he continued being cold, continued being unresponsive, the boy would leave him alone. Go on his way and be excessively happy somewhere else. Kageyama rose and went into the bathroom that adjoined to his room, turning on the shower to the hottest it could go. He pulled the sweater off of his body turning to look at himself in the mirror. Over the past few months he sometimes went days forgetting to eat anything substantial. His ribs protruded slightly underneath his pale skin, his collar bones more prominent from his malnutrition than from how sharp they were. His eyes traveled to the scars running up the length of both forearms. Staring at the words he had carved there many months ago. He expecting to feel a sting of pain, but instead he felt nothing towards the permanent markings on his body. He had been stupid enough to put them there, and now he would simply have to live with it. There was nothing else to it. Steam slowly fogged up the glass leaving his features looking distorted like he was seeing himself through a fun house mirror. His eyes seemed to blend in with the black under his eyes, causing an empty-eyed monster to be staring back at him. Maybe that was all he really was, a demon pretending that he would ever be anything more than eternally damned. 

He undressed the rest of the way stepping into the shower and feeling the burning sensation spreading across his skin. The scalding water spraying against his back and leaving splotchy red patches down the length of it. But he made no effort to turn it down, because this was the only time he would ever feel anything. It was the only time he could truly say that he was alive, and not just a ghost floating through life with no sense of time or self. He felt the urge to scream, to bang his fists against the wall and yell until there was nothing left inside of him. But instead he scratched at the scars that had long since healed over, maybe hoping doing so would distort the meaning of them. Would erase the words from his body that took away his ability to ever comfortably wear t-shirts in public again. Instead of erasing the words it left them redder, and angrier than they had been in a long time. Sinking to the shower floor he allowed the water to beat against his spine, and he put his head in his hands wanting the world to go black around him. Wanting there to be no world at all. 

But despite all of this he wouldn’t allow himself to cry, this would only reaffirm and strengthen the things he already knew to be true about himself. He sat in the darkness his hands had made until the water turned to ice, and where he once was scalding in the heat he was shivering in the cold. He stood up on shaking legs and wrapped a towel around his waist, not even bothering to dry off his hair as it dripped cold droplets of water down his chest and onto the carpet of his bedroom floor. He laid once again on his bed staring up at the ceiling fan, only this time the cold numbed his body leaving him truly void of any sort of feeling at all. 

“Kageyama I am just coming to drop off your laund..OH!” His mom walked into the room, but dropped the laundry basket at the sight of her son’s half-exposed body, his lips nearly blue from the cold. Just as her eyes were lingering to the redness of his arms he shot to a sitting position. Wrapping his arms around himself so the scars were facing in. She threw a warm sweater at him from the top of the basket turning her back as he pulled it over his head with a grunted thanks as acknowledgment. She turned off his fan, setting the laundry on his desk and walking out of the room softly shutting the door behind her. She had always been a gentle women, always wanting the best for her son, but not knowing how to give him the best. So instead of trying to figure him out she left him alone to his own little world inside of his head. Not knowing that maybe if she had tried a little harder to separate him from himself he wouldn’t be so lost by reality. 

“Dinner’s ready if you want it Kage.” His mom called from the kitchen, she still announced it every night despite her son’s lack of attendance. But in a change of events he rose and walked into the kitchen, his mom’s eyes widening as he took a seat across from hers. He wished he could say that the sight of his deteriorating figure in the mirror persuaded him to finally eat, but that wasn’t really it at all. He thought maybe fixing the physical emptiness would be enough to stop the dreams. That maybe somehow his hunger transformed itself into his deepest desires keeping him awake at night until he quenched it. 

“How was your first day of school Kage? Did you make any friends?” Those two simple questions were enough to make Kageyama regret ever leaving his bedroom. Since he hadn’t experienced it in a long time he forgot that small talk was a common trait amongst moms at dinner time. He was at least glad his dad wasn’t there to try to add to the fake atmosphere of family bonding. Because maybe they were all pretending that their family was as nuclear as any other suburban white family in the neighborhood surrounding them, but he was pretending the most. He picked up extra hours at work so he had an excuse to never be home in time for dinner, and even when he was home it felt like he wasn’t there at all. Not that Kageyama minded, he would rather have an absent father than a father that just pretended to care about how you were doing. 

“It was good. And..” Kageyama paused wondering whether he should tell his mom about Hinata. He wouldn’t be lying to her if he simply told her he had made no friends, because he didn’t consider Hinata one. “No, I haven’t made any friends yet.” He finished deciding that if he had said anything about Hinata it would only lead to more questions that he didn’t have the patience to answer. Even having re-thought of the small flame haired boy made him lose his appetite. He pushed the food around on his plate to make it look like he had made a dent in it. The he thanked his mom for the meal and retreated back into his dungeon of solitude. 

He fumbled in the darkness for the switch and his fan came whirring to life above his head. Except this time he lay on his bed in total darkness. He didn’t dare close his eyes because even the prospect of sleep scared him. He was supposed to be a fortress of ice, cold and unfeeling. But everyone is afraid of something even if they tell themselves they aren’t. Most people have to encounter the object of their fear to be frightened, such as spiders or heights, but for Kageyama he lived within his fear constantly. Because the thing that Kageyama feared the most was himself. Every time he looked in the mirror he was face to face with the curator of his nightmares. How can you expect to live when your deepest desires are also your darkest secrets? Kageyama forced himself to stay awake for as long as he could, night after night, and for what? Because when he was awake he still was able to convince himself that he wasn’t all of the things he had etched into his skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note:  
>  I know this is a relatively short chapter but I felt like the emotions it held in it made it substantial. Kageyama as a character is a very personal thing to me so I hope some of you feel like you can relate to the things he's going through. Feel free to be imaginative about what exactly Kageyama has written on his skin because I am not sure if I will ever reveal that explicitly, I like you to have some creative license, so I am intentionally vague sometimes. Like with his ~dreams~ (Although I will probably explain those).   
>  -Finn ~(. _ .)~


End file.
